Sequoias - Part 1 - Sequoia National Park

I am skipping over the first part of our vacation and will write more about it later. Last week Friday we took a trip through Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon. I am going to divide Friday into three parts (maybe four). The first part is Sequoia itself. As you can tell, the elevation is high and the vistas are gorgeous.

The first stop has nothing to do with trees. It is just a famous rock called tunnel rock. At the Market, where we ate lunch, they had a photo of an old Model T driving under it. The excursion down from the rock was the beginning of the end for the girls pants - if they aren't tossed by the end of the trip, they will be relegated to play clothes. :)

If you've never seen a giant Sequoia, you cannot really appreciate how vast they are unless you've seen them in person. They defy description and when you learn about their history and their remarkable resistance to fire, they become even more awe-inspiring. 

Just a small giant in the parking lot with the light shining through. :)

We took a trip through the Giant Forest Museum, which gives some interesting statistics about various 'biggest' trees around the world and how.or.why they qualify for the designation. 

The Sentinel is one of the famous named trees that it is important to say you've seen. Here is C, K, and A posing in front of the Sentinel. We hiked to Sherman's Tree and I took photos of it but none that really struck me to share. This is a tree I saw along the trail to Sherman's - easier to photograph than one of the true giants.

Here are the girls in front of a cross-section of a Sequoia - see the man climbing it behind them?

Here the girls give you a sense of scale for some giant roots.

Here is a shot taken along the trunk of the tree whose roots you just saw. About half way down its length there is a tunnel through it - at the opening of that tunnel stands Tim and C (if you can see them at all).

Normally, fallen Sequoias shatter but this one is still in fairly good shape. In the tunnel, you find a hollow tube where the tree had burned internally.

Here is a look along the trunk from the opposite side - in this shot, it is a bit easier to see the length that is covered by this fallen giant.

Sequoia National Park is cool and the General Sherman, the world's largest tree by mass is in Sequoia but let me tell you, it was not the coolest part of the day. :)

Please let me know if this loads quickly or if it ties up your computer. I am resizing the images manually rather than using the program that does it automatically (the program resides on my old computer at home and doesn't work on the laptop), which means, that these files are larger and more unwieldy.